We cannot fix problems if we cannot be honest enough to admit that they exist. If we are honest with ourselves, there is something deeply wrong with the JSE’s stock market and it appears systemic. One way to see it is that the JSE’s ecosystem is stuck in a negative feedback loop. Our stock market…
Tag: fundamentals
Good Businesses Tend To Stay Good
OLD ARTICLE – Original posted on January 24, 2018 I have a counter-intuitive argument that scale can create problems. Why do I say this? Anecdotally, we know that you cannot choose which stock to invest in based purely on the size of the company. We know that investing is not that easy. But can we prove…
Management Shareholding Abuses
OLD ARTICLE – Original posted on June 21, 2018 A traditional view wants a listed company to have their management as large shareholders. This gives them skin in the game, aligns them to shareholders and incentivizes them to succeed. All perfectly good reasons. But, this did not prevent Steinhoff from happening. If anything, this was…
What Is & Is Not Fraud?
OLD ARTICLE – Original posted on July 24, 2018 The American-styled short-selling model works on aggressive negative press releases, research and other PR stunts (now apparently including legions of anonymous Twitter accounts) to drive a share price down. Fair is fair, none of these actions are illegal if they disclose their beneficial interest. While this…
When Does Valuation Matter & When Doesn’t it?
OLD ARTICLE – Original posted on October 5, 2018 Introduction: Fundamentals are what you get but valuation is how much you pay for it. The less you pay for a given set of fundamentals, the more you weight the odds in your favour that the investment will have a positive outcome. Hence, even if fundamentals are…
How Does Acquisitive Growth Work?
OLD ARTICLE – Original posted on January 4, 2017 Due to consolidation accounting (or “Group accounting”) rules, when one company controls another one (from 50% + 1 vote up to full-control of 100%, depending on circumstances), that first company (or the “parent” company) gets to accounting for both the financial performance of itself and the financial performance of all…
Lies, Damned Lies & Adjusted Earnings
OLD ARTICLE – Originally posted on September 23, 2016 When investing in a listed share, you are buying part of a business and own a portion of its future profits (or losses). Therefore, the per share earnings of a listed company are a big deal for investors with shares rising and falling base on them (or at least…
Five Reasons Not To Invest In A Stock
OLD ARTICLE – Original posted April 1, 2016 Given the small cap space as a capital growth asset class and my predisposition towards being long, this website tends to be about which stocks to buy. Let me turn that on its head and give some (hopefully intuitive) pointers for which stocks to not buy. When you are…
The Value of Forecasts
OLD ARTICLE – Original posted on June 30, 2015 In the context of the stock market and its underlying individual listed companies, what is the value of building, making and using forecasts? By their very nature, forecasts for companies are an attempt to anticipate the future earnings of a company. They are not a promise of what the…
Independence = Overrated; Incentive = Underrated
OLD ARTICLE – Original posted on June 18, 2015 There is a lot emphasis on independence in various roles in financial markets. External auditors have to be independent, advisors hopefully too, wealth managers, some members of company Boards, and so on. All independent. But why? The theory goes that if a person is independent, then…